Cyber security study: 64% of companies expecting cyber attack within next year

Bit9 + Carbon Black have announced the results of a cyber security study which shows that nearly two-thirds (64%) of UK IT decision-makers said they expect their organisation to be the target of a cyber attack within the next 12 months. And nearly one in three (32%) of those surveyed confirm their business was hit by a cyber-attack during the past year.

Many organisations were uncertain about their ability to detect a cyber-attack, as almost half of those surveyed (49%) said they did not even know if they had been compromised. Highlighting the problem of blind spots on enterprise endpoints, 61% of respondents rated their ability to detect suspicious behaviour in advance of an attack as no better than average.

POS Systems a Problem Area

In organisations that use point-of-sale (POS) systems to process credit card payments, 70% admitted they had no way of knowing if their systems had been targeted. And only 20% were able to say with confidence that their POS systems had not been targeted by cyber attack. Among POS users, only half (52%) were confident or very confident that their current security solution would be able to stop advanced threats or targeted attacks against their systems.

“Visibility is critical for effective security, yet these results show that far too many organisations don’t know what’s happening on their endpoints”, said Ben Johnson, chief evangelist for Bit9 + Carbon Black. “You can’t stop advanced threats and targeted attacks if you can’t see what’s happening. Prevention, detection and response are built on the ability to see all activity on every endpoint and server”.

The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne, covered 250 UK IT decision makers, working in organisations of at least 250 employees, across an array of industries.